Lent is a period extending from Ash Wednesday - the day after Pancake/Shrove Tuesday - to Holy Saturday - the day before Easter Sunday - observed as a time of penance and fasting in the Christian calendar.

Penance is regret for one’s wrong-doing and the desire to make amends, or voluntary self-punishment to atone for a sin or crime. Forgiveness of sins depends on the confession and acknowledgment of wrong-doing, and usually requires prayer, fasting and service. How does this affect people who commit a really terrible sin – such as murdering an Archbishop within his own cathedral?

So how did Archbishop Thomas Becket’s four assassins fare after his murder in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170? Expecting to be rewarded by King Henry II, they holed up in Saltwood Castle, near Canterbury, the home of the infamous Ranulf De Broc (who had stayed outside the cathedral as the other four men went in to confront and finally murder Becket) dividing up the murdered Archbishop’s looted possessions. Then - on advice from King Henry - they travelled north, first to Scotland and then to hunt in the royal forests near Hugh de Morville’s castle in Knaresborough, ‘entertained by sheriffs and royal constables’. After Pope Alexander III excommunicated them in 1172, however, they became ‘persona non grata’. No-one would associate with them; and in 1173 Becket was declared a saint.

Henry II encouraged the murderers to seek penance from the Pope in Rome. William de Tracy, who had already confessed his sin to the Bishop of Exeter, went first. After receiving penance of 14 years’ exile in the Holy Land, he returned from Rome to England, to organise his affairs - only to find parts of his estates now owned by the Crown. Hugh de Morville followed him to the Papal Curia, then Reginald Fitz Urse, and finally Richard Brito. 

By 1173, all four were in the Holy Land, visiting Jerusalem ‘barefoot and in hair shirts’, giving money to the Templars and charities to distribute to the poor. All had died there before 1182, according to the Italian chronicler Romuald of Salerno. It is thought that - as instructed by the Pope - they lived at the Black Mountain, a multi-cultural monastic settlement near Antioch. They spent their days in ‘fasting, vigils, praying and lamentations’. As an example to others, they were buried outside the gate of the Temple in Jerusalem with the stone epitaph: ‘Here lie those wretches who martyred the Blessed St Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury’. The epitaph vanished when the Ottoman Turks rebuilt the city walls in the 16th century. Nevertheless their notoriety lives on.